romantic comedy
by syndomatic
Summary: They stay together because they're the same, really, when it all comes down to it. — FalknerWhitney


I don't own Pokémon or any of its characters. Title and lyrics from Stars.

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_and so we disconnect  
the room goes quiet around us_

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**v.**

The park smells of rust and decay and the cool scent of after-rain.

They're sitting on an abandoned bench, legs touching, watching the fading sunlight illuminate the still swing-sets and see-saws until the rust and grime melt together into a blur. The grass is wet and she's cold but she doesn't mind.

She looks up to the clouds and thinks. She thinks of life and school and all the opportunities she — _they _— missed. For a moment, she wonders if he ever thought about it, too, an entire lifetime of could-haves and would-haves and should-haves hanging above their heads. She wonders if it hurt.

His hand is cold, (but hers are, too.) The smile he gives her is bittersweet and reassuring all at once. She thinks she believes him (for once.)

The clouds shift above them.

Whitney leans against his shoulder and it doesn't feel like an ending.

Not yet.

**iv.**

Whitney holds his hand on the fifth time they walk home. The wind is chilly; he doesn't lend her his jacket and truthfully, she's thankful for that. She doesn't know why.

"I'm sorry, okay." she finally says, when they're in front of her house, looking away from him. (_I'm sorry I wasn't her_.)

"It's — " He gazes up to the clouds. They're gray. " — it's okay. Really, it was my fault."

She twists her lips into a smile. "See you tomorrow." she says, not really answering him.

**iii.**

Whitney finds him standing in front of the stairs after school.

"What are you doing?"

Falkner looks up to her, his eyes comatose and unblinking. His mouth twitches into a half-there, half-familiar smile that she's learned to appreciate.

Whitney says nothing. She avoids looking at him in the eye because it reminds her of someone she hates; and even though they're really nothing alike, she's not surprised she doesn't have anywhere to hide from _him_.

"Waiting," he finally replies. His gaze pans around the clinically white walls of the building, watching the light bend and twist. "For you." he then adds, as an afterthought. As if he needed to remember.

She bites her lip. She vaguely wonders if it's just an act of desperation, all this, just to feel something. Because when it all comes down to it, aren't they just two sides of the same coin (or something like that?)

"Thanks," she chokes out, almost sincerely, but when she lifts her head he's already halfway gone. Whitney hears herself call for him, but her voice is drowned over her own laughter.

**ii.**

He sits on the grass of her backyard as she dribbles and shoots hoops in front of him. She's pretty sure he's mulling over the fact that he's disregarding his father's — who is currently piloting a plane to Saffron right now, god does he have a complex — curfew by staying here when he should be home, so she drops her basketball and matter-of-factly tells him to live a little.

Falkner raises an eyebrow and opens his mouth to say something, and she expects him to spit out a practiced insult about her lack of priorities or something, but he doesn't.

He kisses her instead.

It's light and quick and (his eyes are so blue) she doesn't quite know what to feel when she pulls away. But then she remembers _him_, and she doesn't need to ask to figure out that he's thinking about _her_, too.

(Because he isn't Brawly or Roark or Volkner; he doesn't want this.)

Sadly enough, she doesn't have the energy to correct him; and neither does he.

She doesn't mind, really (this worries her.)

**i.**

She understands that she's never the first choice.

She's Whitney; the pretty, likable girl who everybody knows and nobody remembers, someone who nobody gives a second look when she's not lazily flirting with them into a relationship that'll never happen.

And it's okay. She's taught herself a lot of things: how to let someone else guide you without being controlled, how to push back the guilt in your throat when you're dismissing someone's affections, how to look hopeful and innocent and tilt your face at _just _the right angle to let your eyes catch the light (among others.)

Point being, she's not supposed to hesitate when Falkner asks her to be his rebound.

"You're serious," she repeats, because it's been thirty-two seconds and she hasn't come up with a definite name yet. Not even an obscure possibility.

He nods nonchalantly. "I understand if you don't want to," he begins, all too restrained and she's quite sure he's trying to use reverse psychology on her right now _what does that mean_. "But think of it as a mutual relationship." He laughs, then, but it sounds hollow, like he's laughing about the fact that there's nothing to laugh about. She doesn't like it.

She blinks.

And then it hits her. She remembers the girl from the class downstairs, the class representative with inky black hair and tight-lipped smiles and polite handshakes at the teacher's lounge where her father sits, — the girl who laces her hand together with a tall, blond boy's, sometimes — and she understands.

"Okay." she replies, unconvincingly.

"Okay."

She watches him leave the classroom and it already feels like an ending.

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_it's called the life effect  
__will it always surround us?_

_._

_._

_—_

**A/N: **First Pokémon fanfiction! I hope it's not _too_ bad.

22/9/13, 10:32 PM


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